Is Taylor Swift Better Off as a Showgirl or Tortured Poet?

Taylor Swift has unveiled her next musical era — and like many things she does, it’s become a huge topic of conversation. 

On Oct. 3, the singer, 35, released her anticipated 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, which sees her team up with music producers Max Martin and Shellback for the first time since Reputation. 

While The Tortured Poets Department saw the singer get into her feelings with heartwrenching breakup tracks like “loml” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” her latest release is a full return to her pop princess glory with upbeat tracks and glitter gel pen lyrics, no doubt a nod to her current state of life right now.

Following a widely successful Eras Tour, where she celebrated her musical journey as an artist, and later gaining ownership of her masters, Swift is also flourishing in her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce, announcing their engagement in August. 

As she described on the New Heights podcast back in August, this album (and its orange theme) is all about this loud stage of her life right now. 

“It feels like kind of energetically how my life has felt,” she explained. “And this album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this [Eras] Tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant.” 

While many theorized the album would be an introspective look at her life in the limelight as a “showgirl,” since its release there has been much debate about the cohesiveness of the album as a whole, from next-level raunchy lyrics to recycled themes and narratives.

As Swifties know from past experience, their pop queen is never going to do what they think she will — which is exactly why, love or hate it, her music remains the most-talked about in the industry.

From the tracklist to the general vibes, two PEOPLE staffers share their Pop Take on Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl and whether it lives up to their “Wi$h Li$t.” 

The Return of Glitter Gel Pen Lyrics 

Meredith Wilshere: In addition to her vocal strength and performance, Swift has always been known for her songwriting. On Lover, her fans were willing to look past her most cringe song “ME!” (real ones remember the lyric change) because it meant that we got more thoughtful and developed songs like “The Archer” and “Cruel Summer.”

I had anticipated at least one cringe song per album: Midnights had “Vigilante S—,” The Tortured Poets Department had “Down Bad,” but I didn’t realize how many of them we would be getting on The Life of a Showgirl. There are a lot of “sticky” lyrics that make your ears perk up and question if this is the same woman who wrote, “Your integrity makes me seem small / you paint dreamscapes on the wall.” 

The one that stopped me in my tracks was, “I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger.” It felt so out of place for what we’re used to, while still also mentioning that she’s made references to being “the man” before. I also never thought that Swift would mention “memes” and “trolling. (“Everybody’s so punk on the internet / Everyone’s unbothered ’til they’re not / Every joke’s just trolling and memes..”) For someone who claims to be offline, she feels very tapped into the cultural zeitgeist.

Kelsie Gibson: I will be the first to admit, some of the lyrics on The Life of a Showgirl made me cringe in real time (having lyrics like “bad b—-” and “savage” in a track 5 song should be illegal), but at her heart, Swift is a millennial girlie. 

Remember how the internet cringed when they first heard the “Karma is a cat” lyric? Then we all screamed the lyrics at the Eras Tour! That’s the duality of Taylor. She knows Aristotle, but she can “keep it 100” at the same time. 

Even Swift has explained that her lyrics are written by three different pens: quill, fountain and glitter gel. She gave us four albums of the former two; we can’t fault her for wanting to get back into her girlie pop, glitter gel pen era. She’s allowed to experiment, and as we saw following her Lover era, she always comes “back stronger than a ‘90s trend.” 

What Is the Life of a Showgirl, Really?

MW: When I think The Life of a Showgirl, I think about Moulin Rouge, Chicago, Burlesque, leaving room for pop songs that invoke feelings of having to perform for an audience (loss of sense of self), aging in an industry that demands something fresh and new every year, and even questioning why one performs in the first place. It’s something that “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” plays on well that should have been expanded upon in an album that promised Folklore-level storytelling. Instead, we got surface-level readings and reflections on fame, money and power. 

KG: I agree that the album feels a bit like a mish-mash of themes. Many fans, myself included, expected that the album would be an introspective look at her life in the spotlight and the ups and downs that come with it, almost like a mirror version of Reputation. While certain tracks are loud and flashy like a showgirl, when strung together, the album topples like a Rockettes Wooden Soldier Fall. 

Ironically, it’s the album’s final and titular song that feels the most cohesive. It has all the makings of a classic Taylor Swift hit, from its personal storytelling, “country music twist” at the end, and, of course, a sweet feature from her pal and former Eras Tour opener Sabrina Carpenter.

The end truly felt like Swift was metaphorically walking through that orange door on stage (if you know, you know), saying goodbye to the Lover house once and for all and stepping into the unknown. It was the perfect bow on her widely successful last few years, but also left me wanting even more. Seriously, where is the deluxe version and bonus tracks? 

One thing I will add, however, is that the beauty of Swift is that she never does what you think she will. Remember when we thought Reputation would be a scathing album against her haters? Sure, she fully embraced her snake era at the time, but when the album actually shed its skin, it was actually a romantic love letter. Similarly to Midnights, the imagery released beforehand had everyone convinced we were getting a Stevie Nicks ‘70s rock album, and then the result was further from it with Jack Antonoff synths and techno beats. 

MW: That being said, it feels like there is artistry and a central thesis that is missing from the album that would make this a cohesive project as a whole. We wanted a peek into the life of a showgirl, and we only got a wink and shoulder shimmy. 

She Buries Hatchets but Keeps Maps of Where She Put Them

MW: The theme of this album spans from befriending people who are canceled, to her romantic hopes and wishes, to reflections on how people think and feel about her. If it is to be believed that “Actually Romantic” is a Charli xcx diss track, then it comes off as a misreading of Charli’s “Sympathy Is a Knife.” 

In that song, Charli talks about how she doesn’t want to see Swift “backstage at my boyfriend’s show” during the time when Swift was dating Matty Healy and Charli was dating, but not yet married to George Daniel. Charli sings about her insecurity being around Swift, and she “couldn’t even be her if I tried.” 

In “Actually Romantic,” Swift seemingly “claps back” at Charli, mentioning that once she called her “Boring Barbie” and saying that it’s “romantic” that Charli thinks about her. The potential feud aside, why is Swift choosing to publicly address this now? She never reacted to “Sympathy Is a Knife” when it came out, because her fans know that her responses come in the form of songs. Even in The Tortured Poets Department, Swift mentions her feud with Kim Kardashian in not one but two different tracks. 

KG: While we know that there’s nothing Swift does “better than revenge,” some fans would argue, why dredge up the past now? Well, my argument to that would be: it’s what Swift does best. She’s a writer at heart, and that means her music often becomes her personal diary. Of course, she’s more than capable of writing about things other than heartbreak (and has proven so time and time again), but it’s also what she’s made her entire brand about. 

As she’s in this honeymoon phase with Kelce, of course, she’s going to pull from past experiences to inspire new material. And you know what, it’s created some of her best work! As she rerecorded albums like Speak Now and Reputation, it clearly inspired a whole new catalog of music featured on Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department as she looked back on past heartbreaks with a new perspective.

It’s clearly cathartic for her as a songwriter, but it’s also nostalgic for Swifties who went through similar experiences and now get to relive them all themselves.

Of course, there are always two sides to every story, and while each artist expressed their own narrative in their respective tracks, we clearly don’t know what happened behind the scenes between the two singers. And you know what? It’s not really any of our business. All we can do is take the music for what it is — and that’s show business for you!

KillaTrav or Killed the Vibe? 

MW: While it’s refreshing to hear songs about how in love Swift is with Kelce, to me, the songs about the football star fell flat. We know how capable she is when it comes to writing love songs — “In the middle of the night when I’m in this dream, it’s like a million little stars spelling out your name” is just one of over 100 examples I could pull from. The artistry and lyricism that we’ve grown accustomed to seemingly fades with the Kelce tracks. 

She writes more about the intimacy of their relationship, but in a more straightforward and on-the-nose way. And we know that Swift is capable of so much more than that. 

From Folklore and Evermore, Taylor curated a vibe of a woman who went to the lake where the poets went to die. She’s built herself up as a literary legend who knows Aristotle and the classics. Her references to classic literature used to feel fresh and shed light on literary themes that felt lost to time. As an English major, I feel like her literary prowess and “English teacher” vibe now feels like stolen valor. As a side note, why hasn’t she started a book club like Dua Lipa? Her reading of the point of Ophelia falls flat, and it’s hard to concede that she, as a pop star, has a similar fate as a literary heroine or even an English teacher.  

KG: I agree, I would have also loved to see more introspective lyrics about Kelce on this album. Their romance is light and airy, but that doesn’t mean her lyrics about their relationship have to be surface-level. “So High School” on The Tortured Poets Department felt like the perfect combination of that. It’s sweet to its core, but also tugs at your heartstrings. 

Swift said it best on the New Heights podcast when she recalled the beginnings of their romance and how Kelce publicly declared he wanted to date her to the world. She noted that Kelce’s grand gesture “felt more like I was in an ’80s John Hughes movie, and he was standing outside of my window with a boombox,” referencing the movie Say Anything.

The singer-songwriter then quipped, “I was like, ‘If this guy’s not crazy, which is a big if, but if he’s not crazy, then this is basically every song I’ve ever written since I was a teenager come to life.”

After finding love at last with her soon-to-be-forever partner, I would have loved lyrics that dived deeper into that narrative of undoing “the prophecy” she once believed to be true about herself. Of course, there’s always lucky number album 13 for all of that! 

Pop Princess vs. Tortured Poet

MW: Bubblegum pop is good! I’ll always defend a campy pop song so long as the lyrics are saying something. I think one of the strengths of The Tortured Poets Department is the balance between her energetic pop songs and the melancholy that came along with her personal reflections and confessions. The balance between the two has always been her strength, from sweeping ballads to bass-driven bridges. Without the deeply reflective songs that we’re used to breaking up the album, we get surface-level pop songs that don’t tell us how she feels about her life, as a showgirl, as a heartbroken lover, as a soon-to-be wife.

KG: For me, I’ve always been a sucker for Swift’s bubblegum pop songs. While there was much discourse around Swift’s upbeat Lover album, especially following the release of her experimental Reputation album, it easily became my No. 2 Swift album upon first listen. Of course, following moodier albums like Folklore, Evermore and The Tortured Poets Department, I can understand how the dramatic shift back to pop princess can feel jarring. But that’s the fun of her music, isn’t it? She’s multifaceted and can give us a gutwrenching track like “Cornelia Street” in the same breath as “ME!”